eraser
by Summoner Luna
Summary: Erased, over, out.  -Squall. Time is nebulous, at best.-


His feet make no echo here, and he strains his ears against the silence.

Before he could hear her, and he chased her laugh-or was she crying?-and ended up in the past, and now he walks, in the void, in a place where there is no sound.

He hasn't been here long. A few minutes, maybe.

.

A feeling. He takes another five steps, one after the other, and names it deja vu, and now he feels her weight pressed against his back. He reaches back his arms to tighten his grip around her legs and touches only air. The weight remains, and it is a comfort, and a crutch.

"I was worried about you," he tells the void, not expecting a response. "So, it didn't matter. I can do it again."

It's been weeks, since he left the orphanage.

.

He stops and closes his eyes for a second and he is at Garden, in the training room. Seifer is laying on the ground beside him with his back torn half open because he just _couldn't listen._ He jumps as a tail three times as thick as he is swings around, and trips, and pulls a protect stone out of his pocket and slams it against the ground as hard as he can before cowering over Seifer's body in disbelief that he's going to die with _him_, all because his pride is stronger than knowing he is a junior cadet and not even allowed in here alone yet. A torrent of ice screams over their heads and wraps itself around the T-Rexaur and shatters, and there is Xu, glowering. She disappears again and the ice un-shatters, recedes, disappears as it came and the tail whips back around, and then repeats, ad infinitum.

He opens his eyes, and he is back in the void. It occurs to him that Rinoa has seen the scar Seifer got that day and he feels sick at the thought, a million new images that probably never happened springing out of the dust like ghosts, and they circle around him, and laugh.

"Whatever."

He keeps walking. When did he leave the past? It hasn't been long. Half an hour at the most, surely. And he's usually so good with time.

.

_"I'm not asking you to say anything. I just want you to listen."_

He can't see her. "I'm sorry."

He has time for apologies now, when it might be too late, but it's not that late.

"I can listen now."

He's only been here a day.

.

"Rinoa," he starts, and there are no words that follow. She's gone, frozen somewhere in a monument in Esthar like she said she wanted. That has to be why he hasn't found her yet.

"This is why," he says, "You stay alone." He feels odd to stand, that he hasn't doubled over from everything inside of him that's missing, that walked out of the airship when he let Esthar lead her away.

"This is why," he argues, "You don't." Her breath is warm on his neck and it feels so normal to rest his hand against her side.

"You can't miss something you never had."

"Maybe that was your problem."

She is gone, and he is cold. He's been here for years, and wonders if she will remember him.

.

There is a name on the edge of his mind, and a flash of color. A song he knew once is slightly off-key, and that seems somehow appropriate.

"Ri-n?"

.

_"I can't dance."_

_"You'll be fine."_

.

Time explodes for him, past, present, future all playing at once and he didn't know he could feel so _much_ until he is feeling everything.

_"Hold onto something,"_ but he is dizzy and nothing will hold still.

"I understand, now," he wants to tell _Laguna_ of all people, and each syllable is punctuated by another vision of them, of her, of _her_, until they are the same person and he doesn't know when it all started or why he is here.

Her name ignites and fizzles out and the last thing he sees is the impression it burns into the atmosphere.

* * *

><p><em>There is absolutely nothing original about this concept, and I never really intended to write this, it just sort of... Happened. I guess every FFVIII writer has to do this at least once, I'm just getting it out of my system a little late in the game. :) Title and description shamelessly borrowed from Trent Reznor in all of his genius.<br>_


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